With respect to industrial products such as automobiles, a coating color that has high chroma at the highlight (in the vicinity of specularly reflected light) and that shows a small lightness change from the face (between the highlight and the shade) to the shade (in an oblique direction) has greater appeal as a refreshing and warm coating color, among metallic colors, which appear to be different depending on the observation angle. A known method for producing a coating color having high chroma at the highlight and showing a small lightness change from the face to the shade involves combining an aluminum flake pigment, a color pigment, and, in addition, a particulate titanium oxide pigment. However, such a method suffers from problems such that the chroma at the highlight can be insufficient, and that cloudiness can occur at the shade.
Heretofore, coating compositions comprising a combination of: a mixture of particulate titanium dioxide (particulate titanium oxide) and aluminum flake; a metal oxide complex pigments; and various effect pigments, are known (Patent Literature 1 to 4). However, all of such coating compositions are intended to simply change hue depending on the observation angle, using the difference in the mechanism of color development between a metal oxide complex pigments and an effect pigment. Such compositions do not produce a coating color having high chroma at the highlight and showing a small change in lightness from the face to the shade.